Western – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

The Scalphunters (1968) ****

If ever a film deserves reassessment, this is it. This western, marketed as a vehicle for Burt Lancaster in the wake of hugely successful The Professionals (1966), sees the star playing cussed trapper Joe Bass trying to retrieve furs stolen first by Native Americans and then by outlaws. That the serious race issues tackled here were dressed up in very broad comedy and typical western action ensured it missed out on the kind of recognition that critics would assign a straightforward drama and lost its rightful place as a pivotal picture of the decade.

In theory, a somewhat unusual Burt Lancaster western. In reality something else entirely. For large chunks of the movie Lancaster is absent as the story follows the fortunes of Black slave Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis) as he achieves not just freedom but genuine equality. Joseph is introduced as a slave of the Kiowa, left behind when the Indians steal Joe Bass’s furs. In compensation for his loss, Bass plans to sell Lee in the slave market in St Louis and in the meantime enrols him to help recover his furs.

However, a band of outlaws, specializing in collecting Native American scalps (hence the title) and selling them at $25 a time, get to the furs first as a by-product of a raid on the Kiowas. In pursuit with Bass, Lee falls into a river at the outlaw encampment and becomes the slave of Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) who also aims to sell him. Lee plans to escape until discovering Howie’s large troop is headed for Mexico where the slave would automatically become free. With clever talk, beauty-treatment skills and knowledge of astrology and ecology, Lee insinuates himself into the wagon of Howie’s paramour Kate (Shelley Winters).

With Bass still in pursuit, there are several excellent action scenes as the outnumbered trapper seeks to outwit Howie who turns out to be just as devious. But the main question is not whether Bass will recover his stolen property but which side will Lee pick. Will he act as spy to help Bass get back his furs or will he disown Bass and remain with the murderous genocidal gang who could provide a prospct of freedom? Either in the company of Bass or Howie, he is constantly reminded of his status, taking a beating from one of Howie’s thugs, Bass refusing to share his whisky because he views him not just as a slave who “picked his master” but as a coward refusing to fight back when attacked and beaten up.

The film comes to a very surprising ending but by that time through his own actions Lee is accepted as an equal by Bass and the issue of slavery dissolved. In effect, it is a tale of self-determination. Lee effects liberty by taking advantage of situations and standing up for his own cause.

Lee is one of the most interesting characters to appear on the western scene for a long time. Exactly where he acquired his education is unclear and equally hazy are how – and from where – he escaped and how he ended up as slave of the Commanches before they traded him to the Kiowa. However he came to be in the thick of the story, his tale is by far the most original. But he’s not the only original. The fearless Bass was an early ecological warrior with an intimate understanding of living off the wild, not in normal genre fashion of killing anything that moves, but in knowing how to find sustenance from plants. That in itself would endear him to modern lovers of alternative lifestyles.

Normally the derogatory term “scalphunters” would be reference to Native Americans, but here it is American Americans who exploit this market. Despite being the leader of a vicious bunch, Howie turns out to be a bit of a romantic and Kate a bit more interested in the world than your average female sidekick.

Director Sydney Pollack (The Slender Thread, 1965) does a marvelous job not just in fulfilling action expectations and taking widescreen advantage of the locations but in allowing Lee to take center stage when, technically, according to the credits, Ossie Davis was only the fourth most important member of the cast. Burt Lancaster was approaching an acting peak, following this with The Swimmer (1968) and Castle Keep (1969), happy to take risks on all three pictures, especially here where for most of the movie he is outwitted and ends up in a mud bath.

Both Telly Savalas (Sol Madrid, 1968) and Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) rein in their normal more exuberant personas. Savalas, in particular, cleaves closer to his straightforward work in The Slender Thread than the over-the-top performance of The Dirty Dozen (1967). Winters, usually feisty, is here more winsome and vulnerable, apt to be taken in by sweet-talking men.

But Ossie Davis (The Hill, 1965) is the standout, his repartee spot-on. It is a hugely rounded performance, one minute wheedling, the next sly, boldness and cowardice blood brothers, and while his brainpower gives him the advantage over all the others he is only too aware that such superiority counts for nothing while he remains a slave.

It’s dialog rich and it’s a shame it wasn’t a big hit for that would have surely triggered a sequel – especially in the wake of the following year’s buddy-movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – because the banter between Lee and Bass is priceless. For the dialog thank the original screenplay by future convicted gun-runner William W. Norton (Brannigan, 1975), father of director Bill Norton (Cisco Pike, 1971).

Go see.

Hour of the Gun (1967) ****

The second version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral follows on from the Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas 1957 version also directed by John Sturges and precedes Doc (1971) reviewed yesterday. Good chance to compare the differing approaches.

Destroy a legend at your peril. Mythic western hero Wyatt Earp (James Garner) goes down’n’dirty after the death of his brother, spurning law and order to turn bounty hunter, which is legitimate, and then vigilante, which is not, in pursuit of Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan). A revisionist western, then, with director John Sturges substantially reimagining the image of Earp he had been instrumental in creating through Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), a box office smash starring Lancaster as Earp and Douglas as sidekick Doc Holliday.

The first change is to keep Clanton alive, having been a casualty in the previous picture. The opening sequence sets the record straight. But corruption and the law acting in conjunction pull Earp and Holliday (Jason Robards) up on criminal charges though they are found innocent. When corrupt law fails to work, Clanton resorts to ambush, killing Earp’s brother. Clanton organises a posse of twenty men to kill Earp while the lawman sets up his own, smaller, team of bounty hunters.

It soon transpires Earp’s warrants are little more than “hunting licenses” and although marginally he errs on the side of fairness the odds, courtesy of his superior gunplay, remain substantially stacked in his favour and he picks off the villains one by one, pursuing Clanton into Mexico.

This is the story of Wyatt Earp in transition, shifting into lawlessness, at a time – 1881 – when the West itself was undergoing dramatic change, big business from the East forcing greater acceptance of the law (and using it for their own purposes), the growth of the cattle barons and the gradual elimination of the gunslinger, gunfighter and criminal gangs. There’s no room for romance as there was in O.K. Corral and The Magnificent Seven (1960) just pitiless determination to revenge. But there’s little of the all-male camaraderie that informed The Great Escape (1963). Earp and Holliday remain tight but the others in their gang have been somewhat forcefully enlisted.

The poster is very misleading, giving the impression of an all-action
gun-toting movie rather than one of somber reflection.

The best scenes are the result of Earp conniving, revealing a streak Machiavelli would have envied, even duping Holliday, until it’s clear the Earp of legend has been vanquished. Sturges congratulates himself on telling the “truth.” But that’s the problem. The truth involves a lot of background that slows the picture down. And presenting Earp as transitioning is pretty much a blatant lie. Earp was clearly as ruthless killer at the O.K. Corral as he is now and no amount of pointing to corrupt law can eliminate the fact that the lawman prefers to kill villains rather than see them face justice. So there’s really no transition. Earp is a more civilized version of The Man With No Name. But at least he accepts it. There’s no hypocrisy involved.

The two principals are superb, shucking off the mannerisms that previously defined their screen personas. Gone is the trademark James Garner cheeky chap, the grin and even the slicked-back hairstyle. He is your father in a continually bad mood now rather than your favorite uncle full of japes. How much Sturges pinned back Robards’ capacity for over-acting can be seen by comparing this with the actor’s performance in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

Full marks for Sturges in trying to tell a complex, morally ambivalent, story, and he avoids the more grandiose approach to changes in the West as instanced in Once Upon a Time in the West. The early courtoom scenes slow down the narrative when a couple of lines of dialog could have done the same job. But it is exceptionally true in its depiction of Earp. There is not a bone of redemption in his body. He is going on a killing spree and he doesn’t care who knows it or how it damages his reputation, still high enough before the final episode of the revenge hunt for him to be touted as a future lawman-in-chief for Arizona.

Nor does Doc Holliday offer anything in the way of consolation. This isn’t like The Wild Bunch where a ruthless band of robbers convince themselves they have a code of honor and provide rough camaraderie as a way of filling in the emotional gaps in their lives. Holliday mistakenly sees Earp as man who could not exist outside the law without destroying himself, but that would only concern an Earp who was still interested in rules. Holliday, a self-confessed killer, over 20 deaths to his name, seeks redemption by saving Earp from himself. But in keeping with the raw truth, he is wasting his time. “I’m through with the law,” proclaims Earp, somewhat redundantly, once he dispatches his final victim.

It was a different kind of western at a time when in mainstream Hollywood there was no such thing. Although elegiac in tone, it cuts to the mean. And it was the forerunner of other, more critically acclaimed, westerns like Will Penny (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and in a sense it was precursor to Dirty Harry (1971) where in order to obtain justice Harry Callahan has to throw away his badge.

Many reasons have been advanced for the film’s commercial failure, most erroneously assuming that the genre had fallen into disrepair and was not revived until the glory year of 1969, but as I point out in my book The Gunslingers of ’69, that was far from the case. The same year as Hour of the Gun, John Wayne had ridden high on the box office hog with The War Wagon to follow the previous year’s El Dorado and Paul Newman as Hombre had been a big hit. The first two spaghetti westerns, only released in the U.S. in 1967, were also given as instrumental in the failure of Hour of the Gun, but neither was a massive box office hit. Revisionism had not quite hit the target with the public either as witness Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

The most likely reason was the fact that Sturges set out to dispel a myth that the public were happy with, that the movie was slow moving, and the characters essentially unlikeable. John Ford averred that when the legend became fact you printed the legend, but the opposite was patently not true here. Edward Anhalt (The Satan Bug, 1965) wrote the screenplay based on the straight-shooting biography Tombstone’s Epitaph by Douglas D. Martin. who had previously written about the Earps.

It might be cold, and at times meandering, but it offers up a fascinating character study and although Earp’s transition could be construed as tragedy, the destruction of a good man, Sturges takes no refuge in such an idea. This is Sturges boldest, most courageous, picture and he does nothing to soften the killing. Where The Magnificent Seven, another bunch of killers, ride into Mexico on the back of a bombastic theme tune, this is a much leaner effort, and all the richer for it.

Doc (1971) ***

The revisionist western was often a get-out-of-jail-free card to cover various random exercises that purported to present the West as down’n’dirty, held to account white murderers and rapists and tilted the narrative balance in favour of the Native American. Other times, interpretation of the idea was more liberal. You make up whatever story you liked and hope to pass it off as closer to the truth than what went before.

Here, while Doc Holliday (Stacy Keach) is realistically portrayed as an alcoholic (though whisky was prescribed for medicinal purposes) and suffering severely from the tuberculosis that would bring him to a premature end, the narrative is buried in the realms of the unlikely. Notwithstanding that this is the third rendition in 14 years (and only four years after Hour of the Gun) of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral, whose origins are probably best left to myth, this tries to undercut upholding of the law with corruption, and expects us to fall for a complicated tale that makes no sense. A version of Billy the Kid (Denver John Collins) enters the equation and Doc’s squeeze Kate (Faye Dunaway) veers uneasily between feisty sex worker and adoring partner.

Columnist Pete Hamill (Badge 373, 1973), in his screenwriting debut, ties himself in knots trying to explain how the famous gunfight occurred in the first place. It could as easily have been the consequence of Doc stealing one of the Clanton Brothers’ fiancée, Kate. But although that’s the opening sequence, little is made of it. Instead, we have Wyatt Earp (Harris Yulin) intending to make commercial hay in Tombstone. He’s already deputy marshal but that carries no jurisdiction in Tombstone where there’s money to be made by a corrupt lawman.

Earp is aiming to get elected sheriff and set up buddy Doc in a gambling operation which I guess would have to be illicit in some manner for them to profit. To win favor with the locals, he plans to bring to justice Johnny Ringo, a Clanton associate, who has robbed the stagecoach of $80,000. He bribes Ike Clanton (Michael Witney) with the $20,000 reward money to hand over Ringo. But when that deal goes south for reasons that are unclear the four Earp Brothers plus Doc go head-to-head with the seven-strong Clanton bunch in the corral.

The problem with the OK Corral scenario is that basically you are just filling in time before the shootout. So Doc uses this teaching the Kid to shoot properly, an action that has unforeseen consequences, and setting up house with Kate while coughing up blood and knocking back the whisky. Earp spends most of his time in one conspiracy or another. He tends to cut confrontation short with a quick punch or pistol whipping. But when he is bested in a fistfight with Ike his revenge is suggested as the trigger for the all-out confrontation.

The Clantons don’t know how to fight the Chicago way. They take pistols to the shoot-out whereas the opposition come armed with shotguns. Forgive me if I’m a bit short on weaponry intelligence but I’d always been told (from westerns, to be sure) that a shotgun was only effective over a short distance and here I would question their efficiency. And while I’m chucking spanners into the works I’m surprised that whoever’s stage got robbed left recovery of the stolen money ($2.5 million in today’s equivalent) and apprehending the crook to a deputy marshal.

So a bit of a hodge-podge and not a convincing one at that. I’m sure neither Earp nor Doc were knights in shining armor but neither were they as idiotic as they appear here.

Stacy Keach and Harris Yulin had been paired in The End of the Road (1970) and both were being touted as rising stars though ultimately only the former made the marquee leap. Both are dour and stoic more than anything else and it’s left to Faye Dunaway (The Happening, 1967) to bring some spark to the picture. Being the sassy one, she’s given the best lines, such as explaining to a religious-minded individual that the only time she would be getting on her knees would be for another purpose entirely.

Frank Perry (Lilith, 1962) directs with an eye towards the elegiac but all the artistic sepia-toned cleverness can’t conceal a movie sorely lacking in decent story.

Valdez Is Coming (1971) *****

Five-star review for a long-forgotten much-maligned western? Let me explain. Let me start with one of the most stunning cinematic images I have ever seen that in the hands of a better director would be considered one of the greatest ever devised. The titular Valdez (Burt Lancaster) appears on the top of a hill arms stretched out back contorted under the weight of a crucifix strapped to his back. Another director, more conscious of the image potential, would probably have had him straighten up at that point and positioned the camera for a close-up so the image could be captured against the sky. Even so, it’s an extraordinary image for a director, Edwin Sherin, making his debut.

But that’s not the only one. We’re familiar with the innocent man being forced to dance as the area around his feet is peppered with bullets from a sadistic gunslinger. Here, the victim of gunman Davis (Richard Jordan) is an old Native American woman. As she walks from a hut to collect water, he assails her with a barrage of shots. Does she dance? Does she dickey! She doesn’t even pause. As though she’s used to worse.

The movie opens with another stunning image. Valdez, a local Arizona Territory constable (presumably a less important title than sheriff though he wears the badge), takes time out from riding shotgun to watch a bunch of young bucks blast away at a target. Which appears to be the hut I mentioned. Takes a while for an explanation to be forthcoming. Said hut houses a fugitive from justice.

There’s another startling image when Valdez is used as target practice by the thugs employed by local bigwig Tanner (Jon Cypher). As if he was the equivalent to the target girl in a knife-throwing act, every space around his body is hit by a bullet.

And that’s before we come to the audacious freeze frame ending which, theoretically at least, leaves matters unresolved.

There’s also a post-modern post-whatever feel to this which should very much appeal to the contemporary audience. Very little is explained. Valdez has anglicized his Christian name of Roberto to Bob. He can’t get rid of his Mexican accent but he talks so softly that mostly you don’t notice. From his later demeanor, it’s quite clear that earlier on he is making a huge effort to fit in, not stand out, in a town dominated by white Americans.

But we also never find out why Tanner is hunting a man. He’s responsible for putting the man in the hut under siege. And although that turns out to be case of mistaken identity, we never find out who Tanner is chasing or why.

Tanner’s live-in girlfriend Gay (Susan Clark), a widow, has murdered her husband and we never find out why either. But she’s not the only unusual character. The gunslinger Davies is a misfit, finding out the hard way that intemperance and impulsiveness are not the way to make friends, and even Tanner has little time for a gunslinger too handy with a gun, but despite the callous exterior he has a softer side. And while that softer side turns out to be lucky at one point for Valdez, the lawman still doesn’t trust the capricious youngster.

The tale, such as it is, is one of principle. Valdez has been tricked into killing the man in the hut. Given the man proved innocent, Valdez thinks it right his widow, the Native American victim of the target practice, should receive some compensation. A hundred dollars seems a small price to pay. But Tanner is insulted at the very thought. In his eyes, the dead man was a no-account African American.

When Valdez insists, he is trussed up in the makeshift crucifix and left to make a humiliating walk home. That’s when he reverts, shuffles off his disguise as a soft-spoken relatively harmless lawman in a town where the most he will be called upon to do is ride occasional shotgun and jail an occasional drunk.

It’s vague too – you’d have to be well up on western lore to know the significance of the photograph he keeps under his bed – regarding his past. But hidden under the bed is what was known as a buffalo gun, a long-range rifle, manufactured by Sharps (hence the term “sharpshooter”) and suddenly he’s a different, more threatening, person, kitted out in his old cavalry uniform, hat brim upturned.

He interrupts Tanner and Gay making love to demand his hundred dollars. He only takes Gay hostage to make his escape, minus the cash, and then kidnaps her to provide him with something to trade. Unlike in The Hunting Party (1971), the weapon doesn’t magically ease his path. He doesn’t just take pot-shots from a distance. He spends most of the time rushing up and down hills, using boulders as cover. He can’t afford to use the gun since that would pinpoint his position. So he’s got to knock out Tanner’s advance scouts in other ways.

Meanwhile, Gay, who initially sympathized with Valdez, is less keen on him once she’s a victim, and spends most of her time trying to escape. In due course, Valdez’s marksmanship reduces the pursuing force by eleven.

He just about escapes but in a spectacular piece of stunt work involving horses colliding and people being thrown from the saddle, he is surrounded. Chief thug El Segundo (Barton Heyman) realizes that he and Valdez have something in common. Valdez wasn’t a buffalo hunter at all, but a stalker of Apaches, the enemy of El Segundo.

So El Segundo pulls back his men leaving Tanner to face up to Valdez alone. Or perhaps pay up the hundred dollars. We never find out because the image is frozen on the screen as the camera pulls back.

Edwin Scherin was rewarded for his boldness by only being allowed to make one more movie (My Old Man’s Place, 1971). This was the first of Burt Lancaster’s western trilogy that encompassed Michael Winner’s Lawman (1971) and Robert Aldrich’s Ulzana’s Raid (1972), completing his move into more of the flawed character he first essayed in The Swimmer (1969). Susan Clark (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) makes the most of a role that permits her to switch from sympathetic to hard-nosed. Richard Jordan (Chato’s Land, 1972) has a peach of a part as the swithering gunman desperate for attention. Screenplay by Roland Kibbee (The Appaloosa, 1966) and David Rayfiel (Castle Keep, 1969) based on the novel by Elmore Leonard (Mr Majestyk, 1974).

So, sure, justified vengeance but exceptionally well done.

Catch this on Amazon Prime.

Well worth checking it out.

Hot Spur (1968) *

Blame the algorithm. Once I had to my great surprise found The Hunting Party (1971) on Amazon Prime the streamer decided that my next port of call should be another rape-filled western. There are only two things to recommend this – firstly, it makes The Hunting Party look like a masterpiece, and secondly it was filmed at the Spahn Ranch made famous by Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and as the place where the Charles Manson gang hung out before going on a murder spree.

One element of this picture will chime with the contemporary audience. Here, rape is used as a weapon, an unfortunate development in the last half century during a variety of vicious wars. As ever, woman is the innocent victim while man has convinced himself this is not only necessary but justified.

There’s maybe another echo if you want to be generous – of the sequence in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) where Harmonica (Charles Bronson) is forced to witness the death of his older brother. Here Mexican stable hand Carlo (James Arena) witnesses the multiple rape and beating of his older sister who subsequently commits suicide. So he’s on a mission to track down the perpetrators.

Which leads him to the O’Hara ranch, where he is treated with racist and physical abuse. Ranch owner Jason (Joseph Mascolo) handles wife Susan (Virginia Gordon) badly, blaming her for not providing him with a son and heir. Their love-making is on the rough side and she seeks comfort among the cowhands, who prefer keeping their jobs to a roll in the hay with the boss’s wife.

Carlo kidnaps her. And at first you think she’s going to be used as bait to attract Jason, the last of the rapists of his sister, to a remote mountain shack. But, in fact, Carlo plans to eliminate pretty much the entire complement of ranch hands, hiding weapons at various ambush points on the trail and planting a bear trap in the ground.

But he’s got worse in mind. And apologetic though he is towards Susan, his plan is to make her suffer like his sister, which means tying her up, raping her and striping her back with a whip. The only good bit, if you can call it that, in this picture is that at the end Susan knifes to death her husband and escapes.

There’s one other bit that initially looks good and then tumbles into incomprehension. Jason has sent an advance scout up the mountain and told him to fire one shot if his wife is up there and two if she’s not. The cowboy doesn’t get the chance, Carlo killing him with two shots. So, registering this, Jason believes they’re on the wrong trail but then for no apparent reason continues up the same route.

From the amount of sexuality and nudity on show I guess, given the times when Hollywood was still only nibbling away at the edges of what was permissible, this was made for an entirely different audience than the standard fan of westerns. All women are present just to be used and abused.

Directed by one Lee Frost, whom imdb rates as “one of the most talented and versatile filmmakers in the annals of exploitation cinema.” Cowritten with producer Bob Cresse.

As it happens, those Amazon Prime algorithms did send me to a whole horde of westerns, some of which like Hombre (1967) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), I’ve already reviewed here. I’ll plunder this stack some more but take a more judicious view of what I watch.

Ugharama.

The Hunting Party (1971) **

Colossal flop and deservedly so. One of the most repellant pictures of a down’n’dirty decade.

It’s not just that rape takes center stage – two completed both supposedly by men in love with her and two attempts by more obvious scum – but that cattle baron’s wife Melissa (Candice Bergen) has to choose between murdering rapist husband Brandt (Gene Hackman) and murdering rapist outlaw Frank (Oliver Reed).

There was an unwelcome trend for consensualizing rape – Straw Dogs (1971) took the same approach – that a woman in a state of some terror would nevertheless warm to her molester. This is the worst kind of male fantasy fulfilment and that taking a women by force will nonetheless make her fall in love with you.

Just how keen Melissa is on her rapist is shown by her various attempts to knife him and escape. Which, of course, Frank dismisses in a version of that old trope, “you’re beautiful when you’re angry” in that he likes a spirited woman.

The otherwise cold-blooded Lee Marvin character in Prime Cut (1972) proved likeable because he had an honor code and didn’t take advantage of a vulnerable woman. It’s impossible to feel any sympathy for Frank especially as Melissa, a teacher, has been kidnapped not for ransom but for the sole purpose of teaching Frank to read. Presumably, being an outlaw who robs banks, he can already count. Maybe he needs help writing ransom notes.

Frank should have been taught to read in childhood, we discover in a twist at the end, because his father could read, which suggests he had a different upbringing to the rest of his gang, but, on account of being determined to annoy his old man, he refused to learn. So although he has a yearning to educate himself he’s not educated enough to work out that learning and kidnapping and rape don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.

The only way any attempt at romance is going to work, even theoretically, is if what awaits Melissa when rescued is worse. Husband Brandt is a venal individual. The movie opens with him raping his wife. Compared to his treatment of sex workers, she gets off lightly. And he balks at paying any supposed ransom on the grounds that his wife will most likely have been raped and return with an unwanted bastard son and he’s not going to pay $50,000 for that privilege. Ever since A Fistful of Dollars western heroes have been every amoral shade of grey but Brandt must be the darkest shade ever.

Plus he’s just taken delivery of rifles with telescopic sights that have a firing range of about half a mile so he’s up for a little sport, and with four other rich buddies sets out to hunt humans. The rifle is the equivalent to the Gatling Gun in The Wild Bunch (1969), a weapon of awesome power, and every time it hits home the camera focuses on the gory outcome. The 26 men in the outlaw bunch are soon whittled down.

This might have worked if the narrative had followed a different arc. Had Frank turned out to be Melissa’s protector rather than the most successful of her molesters. If the whole gang had show signs of seeking something maternal rather than just sexual in a woman or were all queuing up for a bit of education. And Frank’s treatment of her from the outset had been protective and she had shared with him her fear of her husband.

The best you can say about Frank is he’s a gentler kind of rapist. But he’s still a rapist and taking advantage when Melissa is at her most terrified, soaking wet from falling into a river while trying to escape. If he had continued just trying to soothe her and comfort her that might have taken the tale in a more acceptable direction, but, no, he decides a bit of rape is in order.

Frank’s too dumb to see that his men are going to turn against him if he doesn’t share out his captive and once he’s aware exactly who she is he should at least, in the eyes of the men, either demand a ransom or hand her back.

Although the long-range rifles tilt the odds heavily in favor of the pursuers, one of them is killed, and two, once they have decimated the outlaws, decide the hunt has gone far enough. Another, later on, takes the same view. But Brandt, determined on revenge, pursues the “lovebirds” into the desert where he kills both.

This was intended to launch British actor Oliver Reed (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) into the Hollywood mainstream but he’s miscast. Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970) can do little with a role that makes no coherent sense – unlike Michele Carey in The Animals (1971) she shows no sign of accepting an unwelcome protector just to survive. Had it not been for The French Connection (1971) and, taken in conjunction with Prime Cut (1972), Gene Hackman’s career might have spun off into playing a succession of villains.

One other notable turns up on the credits. This is produced by Lou Morheim who originally owned the remake rights to Seven Samurai (1954) and failed to finesse that into a significant credit on The Magnificent Seven (1960).

Discounting To Trap a Spy (1964), a movie combining two episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E series, this marked the debut of director Don Medford. Lou Morheim (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, 1953), Gilbert Ralston (Willard, 1971) and Bill Norton (The Scalphunters, 1968). contributed to the screenplay.

The bizarre premise set a low bar. Every shade of ugh.

The Hellbenders (1967) ****

An absolute hoot – and I suspect deliberately so. Forget the spaghetti western tag, this is a black comedy – and wild at that. And while its most obvious antecedent is Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) it really belongs in a different sub-genre of the heist-gone-wrong.

After the end of the Civil War, Godfearing Confederate Col Jonas (Joseph Cotten), who had led a regiment called The Hellbenders, plans to re-start the conflict with a million bucks in money stolen from the victorious Union Army.

Along with three sons and two varmints he successfully ambushes the money convoy, slaughtering the escort. The varmints are shot, too. But to get through enemy territory, they need an excuse, so Jonas has co-opted alcoholic girlfriend Kitty (Maria Martin) to play the role of a widow transporting her husband’s coffin, wherein is secreted the stolen loot, to his homelands.

The ploy seems to work fine and dandy when stopped by a Union patrol. Kitty produces the necessary permit and they move on. But Kitty’s got ideas above her station and when Jonas reminds her that she’s not much more than trash, she takes revenge by taking charge of the hearse and racing ahead of the others. Naturally, the wagon hits a rock and crashes. Intemperate son Jeff (Gino Pernice) knives Kitty to death.

That’s the start of a bunch of quandaries. So Ben (Julian Mateos) is despatched to find a replacement. He returns with professional gambler Claire (Norma Bengell) whom he rescued from a dispute he started. Although being paid $2,000 Claire is not enamored of the job but she quickly earns her keep when they are stopped by a posse of lawmen who are not taken in by the permit and begin to open the coffin until she faints on top of it.

Her reward is to be raped by Jeff. She makes the mistake of going to wash half-naked in a pool and Jeff takes this as an open invitation. She’s saved from the actual act by Ben, who has taken a shine to her. To save on the travelling time and the risk of encountering other trouble, Jonas decides they’ll take a short cut. That takes them through a town where, lo and behold, the preacher is acquainted with the good Capt Allen, though luckily not his wife, and out of the goodness of his heart decides to hold a funeral service. Their fear is someone might turn up who can identify the widow. Someone does. But he’s now blind.

The short cut takes them into the path of marauding Mexicans. But before the outlaws can be overrun by a superior force, they are saved by another unit of Union cavalry which originates from the post Capt Allen used to command. And when a Union officer suggests it would be more in keeping for the captain to be buried there, to Jonas’s fury the widow agrees.

That means that later, on a rainy night, the sons have to dig up the coffin. Jonas’s new route takes them through Native American territory, but they appear harmless except that Jeff catches the eye of a young squaw.

They reach a river and encounter an impoverished panhandler. He’s trickier than anyone could expect. Having slaughtered their horses, he holds them up. Jeff manages to kill him but in the shoot-out Jonas is wounded – for a second time.

Before anyone can catch their breath, Native Americans appear, accusing Jeff – who has been sent to buy replacement horses from them – of rape and murder. The other brother, Nat (Angel Aranda), who is keener on enjoying the money than wasting it on a lost cause, turns on Jeff and in the crossfire those two brothers are killed and Ben wounded. But the Indians appear satisfied with the rudimentary justice.

Jonas crawls off lugging the coffin but only gets as far as a ridge before the coffin tumbles downwards and breaks open. Inside ain’t a million bucks but the corpse of the Mexican bandit leader. They stole the wrong coffin, the last of the absurdities to pile up.

Jonas now crawls in the opposite direction, to the river, at whose edges he dies while the flag of The Hellbenders gently floats away.

While not sticking to the formula of the heist-gone-wrong which would involve the thieves falling out, it’s a pretty good variation on it. Women are their downfall, the first widow furious at being spurned, the second widow angry at being used, at having, as part of the masquerade, to dress up in a dead woman’s clothes, and at being considered easy meat for a passing rapist. Though it’s the rapist who ultimately triggers the bullet-ridden climax, it’s Claire, we realize, who’s done the damage, ensuring the money is buried in that most ironic of locations, an enemy cemetery.

While Nat and Jeff are only a sliver away from cliché, driven by lust and greed, respectively, Jonas is a different kettle of fish, not just a man of principle, and praying for the bodies of people he’s about to kill, but exhibiting an odd tenderness for his sons – he’s first to tend the wounds he causes them. Ben is an outlier in the family, for reasons never explained feels a stranger, while Claire, a card cheat and saloon girl, realizes the lunacy of the situation she has found herself in and finesses a way out of it.

What trips the gang up is generally so mundane it wouldn’t find a place in a traditional crime picture, but here, as devilish unforeseen obstacles mount, it becomes clear that I wasn’t laughing at an inept picture but one that set out to tell a different kind of story.

Joseph Cotten (The Last Sunset, 1961) takes advantage of a rare leading role and throws out different shades of character. Julian Mateos (Return of the Seven, 1966) and Brazilian Norma Bengell (Planet of the Vampires, 1965) are otherwise the pick.

Sergio Carbucci (Django, 1966) directs from a screenplay by Ugo Liberatore (The 300 Spartans, 1962) and Jose Gutierrez Maesso (Rebus/Appointment in Beirut, 1968). On the downside, the color is inconsistent. On the upside, there’s an Ennio Morricone score.

Time for re-evaluation.

The Glory Guys (1965) ****

The dismissive verdict of Sam Peckinpah (he wrote the script) is the main reason this remains unfairly underrated. This came out the same year as that director’s over-rated Major Dundee and covers some of the same themes – the training of raw recruits and the woman requiring a protector.

But this is the first cavalry picture I’ve seen where training covers more than recruits falling off their horses, picking fights with each other and getting drunk and into scrapes. The main task of Capt Harrod (Tom Tryon), apart from teaching them to shoot, is to ensure they ride in formation and are ready to take part in action. There’s a brilliant scene where Harrod fakes an Indian attack where they are all in a flash knocked off their horses. And another superb scene where, having achieved an almost impossible goal in double-quick time, Harrod leads them in a ride-past in front of General McCabe (Andrew Duggan) and they ride in about ten rows six abreast, keeping time and distance. When the soldiers dismount during combat, how they arrange for the horses to get out of the way but not run off is also revealed. The scene of the whole detachment leaving the fort is also breathtaking. They are lined up in columns, five or six abreast, and you begin to see, for really the first time, how the U.S. Army operates as a trained unit.

But that’s just the cream of a very finely worked crop. Harrod and McCabe are at odds because the captain’s previous company of raw recruits was virtually wiped out in a previous engagement when the general used them as bait. McCabe is the “glory guy” of the title, everyone else is just trying to keep alive. The only certainty of going into battle, Harrod reminds his men, is that they have a fair chance of not returning home.

Widow Lou Woddard (Senta Berger) pops up to wreak romantic havoc. She owns a gunsmith business, and responsible for driving up sales, so not quite the vulnerable woman. What’s most at stake is her standing in town, her honor if you like, and she can’t be seen to be playing the field. While hardly promiscuous, she has two men on the go, Harrod, who seems disinclined to take the romance beyond a fling, and Army scout Sol Rogers (Harve Pressnell) who is off earning the chunk of money it will take for them to settle down elsewhere.

She doesn’t let on they are rivals and when they discover this it triggers an all-out slugging match – you almost wince with the power of the blows. This ain’t a brawl but a last man standing punch-up where literally they trade blows, one at a time. And she keeps dithering between the two. She reckons Sol isn’t the settling down kind while Harrod’s not keen on commitment. So any time she’s spurned by Harrod she flaunts Rogers.

If she gets her come-uppance, it’s not from either of the men. Attempting to trade barbs with McCabe’s snippy wife Rachael (Jeanne Cooper) she is publicly humiliated. And there’s a terrific scene as the calvary is set to leave the fort and the physical distance between Lou standing on the sidelines with the wives waving husbands goodbye and Harrod on horseback stretches into an emotional chasm simply from the way director Arnold Laven lines up his camera.

The action is clearly based on the Battle of the Little Big Horn. McCabe, instructed to form one half of a pincer movement, races his men ahead to beat his rival general into battle. True to form, he uses Harrod’s men as decoys, theoretically sent out to protect his flank, in reality to draw out the enemy, permitting the general to attack their unguarded rear.

The battle scene is just superb, hordes of cavalry charging towards the enemy, then turning tail when facing superior forces, dismounting to take up positions, then retreating again to the rocks, pursued but managing, mostly, to survive. The scene where Harrod comes across McCabe’s wiped-out army is like the beginning of Zulu (1964). (In fact, it’s worth bearing in mind that Little Big Horn and Isandlwana took place just three years apart and had there been instant global communication in those days the combined events would have sent shockwaves throughout the world.)

It is an excellent script regardless of how Peckinpah felt about the outcome. But it is also a very good western with sufficient changes rendered to the genre’s standard tropes. The compulsory saloon brawl is elevated by an ongoing comic element of Trooper Dugan (James Caan) being constantly defeated in his determination to smash a bottle over someone’s head.

Senta Berger completists should enjoy this far more than her performance in Major Dundee. She essays a more complete realistic character, not quite grasping, but not far short, and in chasing a dream coming close to heartbreak. Tom Tryon (The Cardinal, 1963) is better than I expected and hoofer Harve Pressnell (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) is a revelation. James Caan (El Dorado, 1967), playing a “miserable whining sugar”, is awful, a terrible Irish accent sinking all his attempts at scene stealing

Arnold Laven might have felt hard-done-by in regard to Peckinpah, given the director, in his capacity as producer, had dreamed up The Rifleman television series on which Peckinpah made his name. While this isn’t quite in the same league as Rough Night in Jericho (1967) but better than Sam Whiskey (1969) it deserves reappraisal. Had it featured bigger stars in the two male principal roles it would have attracted more attention at the outset instead of demanding it now.

Well worth a look.

From Noon Till Three (1976) *****

Charles Bronson in a feelgood movie? Charles Bronson the romantic comedy lead? Charles Bronson’s character impotent? The hell you say!

Certainly, Bronson’s boldest role, and if the original concept had played out the way audiences might have expected, the star’s career might have taken the kind of pivot afforded Arnold Schwarzenegger when he took on Twins (1988). But a third act which probably baffled audiences half a century ago plays straight into the hands of the contemporary filmgoer and spins such a twist – almost a horror version of “print the legend” – that nobody has ever invented a better one.

This isn’t just Bronson as you’ve never seen him before but it’s also Jill Ireland in the role of her life, proving not just that she can act but putting on a brilliant performance.

So, this isn’t like any Charles Bronson character you’ve ever seen, light years away from the monosyllabic justified or unjustified killers he had hitherto portrayed for most of the decade. He’s not even the leader of the gang of outlaws and has a decidedly cowardly streak. And this isn’t Jill Ireland, his wife, either, in some punched-up supporting role. Here she essays her inner Katharine Hepburn or prissy Maggie Smith and engages in the kind of male-female verbal duel that hasn’t been seen since The African Queen (1952).

When his horse pulls up lame Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson) decides not to accompany his four outlaw buddies on a bank robbing expedition and despite the prospect of “borrowing” a horse from rich widow Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland) he goes along with her pretense that no such beast exists because he’s had a presentiment that the heist will go awry. The gang agree to pick him up on their return at a tension-sodden three o’clock – hence the title, a mild play on High Noon (1952).

Amanda is more than capable of dealing with his kind despite him spinning her a tale of having lost a similar mansion to her grand three-storey affair after the Civil War and being widowed for seven years and so depressed at his impotency he’s contemplating suicide.

In the way of opposites attracting, one thing leads to another and soon they are waltzing, dressed up to the nines, in her elaborate rooms and taking a dip au natural in a lake. When word comes back that the robbers have been caught and are all set to hang, much against his natural inclination not to jeopardize his newfound love, he agrees, at her behest, to go save them. Although he intends doing nothing of the sort and simply lying low, he is pursued by a posse and only evades capture by swapping clothes with a dentist he captures.

And then the tale deftly switches. The posse kills the real dentist. Seeing only his blood-drenched clothes at a distance, Amanda believes it’s Graham. Meanwhile, he’s locked up after being convicted of the dentist’s crimes. She’s so enthralled by the unlikely romance that she writes a book about it that turns into the kind of publishing phenomenon that triggers tours of Graham’s grave and the house where it all happened.

When Graham is released, you expect the sting in the tale will be that she’ll have gone off and married someone else. But she hasn’t. Except she doesn’t recognize him. Because in the writing she transformed him into a much taller more handsome figure and her imagination can’t deal with reality. Any time he reminds her of an intimate moment, she cries out “it’s in the book.” Finally, somewhat rudely, he does convince her but then, afraid of letting down the millions of fans captivated by the legend, rather than reviving their romance, she kills herself so the story cannot be challenged.

Worse, nobody believes Graham and he is accused of being a fraud and ends up in a lunatic asylum. Charles Bronson the madman, you didn’t see that coming I bet.

As you can tell from the posters, United Artists had no idea how to sell it and it lacked the single immediately visually-appealing gag of Twins, so it was a rare flop at this point in Bronson’s career. But a third act that was viewed as somewhat deranged satire has, in the half century since, now come into its own when questions about identity and point of view and “your own truth” and “recollections may vary” and imposter narrative and reality reinvention and fake news are endemic. In this case “print the legend” comes to haunt Graham.

But what was a flop in 1976 deserves reassessment and should be welcomed by a contemporary audience more able to deal with the sudden shift in tone. It might also put to rest the notions that neither Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) nor Jill Ireland (Rider on the Rain, 1970) could act. This is a wonderfully spirited double act and had the movie been remotely successful might have set them up as a latter-day Tracy-Hepburn. I should note in passing a wonderful tune, “The Trouble With Hello Is Goodbye,” lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Elmer Bernstein. Had the movie not been so quickly dismissed, that had all the making of a torch song.

Writer-director Frank D. Gilroy (Desperate Characters, 1971) has produced some scintillating dialog as well as bringing out the best in the couple. As clever on the spoofery front as Blazing Saddles (1974) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) but with a harder satirical edge.

I chuckled all the way through. It was a delight to see Bronson and Ireland playing such refreshing characters and the rom-com element worked out really well. So two bangs for your buck – a reinvented Bronson in the kind of role you never thought he could manage, and the kind of satire that hits home today.

Put aside all thoughts about what Charles Bronson and for that matter Jill Ireland can do or should do and sit back and enjoy this unexpected gem.

You can catch it on Amazon Prime.

El Dorado (1966) ****

John Wayne incapacitated? Robert Mitchum a liability? The hell you say! You bring together two of the greatest male action figures only to turn the genre upside down and inside out. And I know it’s tradition for heroes to be unable to listen to their hearts, never mind deal with emotion, but it’s a heck of a stretch for them to just completely fall apart when spurned. And I know also that Duke is not invulnerable, this isn’t the MCU for heaven’s sake, and he’s been known in his long career to take a bullet, but to be shot by a woman! That’s very close to taking the proverbial.

Also, westerns usually operate on fairly tight timeframes. If the situation takes place over a longer period that’s usually because it involves a journey. Here, there’s a split of six months between the opening section and the main action, and it does kinda defy belief that the bad guys don’t make the necessary hay while the sheriff is drunk and his main assistant has scarpered.

There’s hardly a word spoken here – between the good guys again for heaven’s sake – that isn’t an insult. Never mind The Magnificent Seven (1960) this is teed up as The Bickering Quartet. And I do have to point out a couple of elements that won’t go down so well with a contemporary audience, one character imitating a Chinese, and a scene where one of our heroes is constantly interrupted in the bath by females, a twist to be sure on the usual scenario of the female lead skinny dipping in a handy pool or river, but it’s like a lame comedy sketch.

This won’t have been influenced by the spaghetti western, the first Sergio Leone game-changer wasn’t screened in the U.S. until the following year, so it’s also worth pointing out that some of the action is pretty savage, both John Wayne and Robert Mitchum indulging in the kind of mean behavior that was usually the prerogative of the villains. Wayne even cheats when it comes to the traditional shoot-out. And while there’s none of the blood-letting that later became synonymous with the genre, director Howard Hawks does something else that is far more realistic than anything that has gone before and would count as a genuine shock to our senses. The gunfire is incredibly loud. Imagine that on Imax and you’d be jumping out of your seat every few minutes.

And just in case you think this is nothing more than a remake of Rio Bravo (1959) where a gunslinger and a drunken sheriff are holed up in jail, here the jail is mostly used as a base, the good guys racing out every now and then to pick someone off. That running, too, by older guys certainly prefigures later action pictures like Taken (2008).

We need the time gap to allow Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), one of the three best gunslingers alive, to disintegrate. He goes from tough lawman keeping an unruly town in order and holding back the worst instincts of land-owner Bart Jason (Ed Asner) planning to go in mobhanded against rival rancher Kevin MacDonald (R.G. Armstrong) in an argument over water rights.

Hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), one of the three best gunslingers alive, turns up for a job with said Jason but is turned off the idea when J.P. gives him the lowdown on the situation. He dallies long enough to set up the notion that he’ll try to win back saloon-owning old flame Maudie (Charlene Holt) from J.P.

Thornton moseys off to the Mason spread to give the owner the bad news. On the way back, Luke Macdonald (Johnny Crawford), Kevin’s youngest son, on guard duty, mistakes Thornton for the enemy and shoots at him. Which results in his death. So Thornton does not get a good welcome when he arrives at the Macdonald farm toting a corpse.

Turns out the young whelp, although taking bullet in the gut, committed suicide because the pain was too much and Luke had been told by his dad that he wouldn’t recover anyway and just suffer a hideous death. While the father accepts this, his daughter Joey (Michele Carey) does not and ambushes Thornton, putting a bullet in his back. Said bullet is mighty inconveniently lodged close to his spine and needs more than the town quack to remove it. Despite sparking up old feelings for said old flame and the prospect of stealing her back from old buddy J.P., Thornton doesn’t dally longer than it takes to get temporarily fixed up, bullet still in place to cause later problems.

Now the tale takes a detour. Not only has six months passed and Thornton miles away from El Dorado, but we’ve got to hold up proceedings to introduce naïve youngster Mississippi (James Caan). Howard Hawks certainly hasn’t learned the knack of the compact introduction from John Sturges a la The Magnificent Seven (1960) so we learn that this young whelp is best with the knife and has spent two years tracking down the four killers of his foster father. The last man to die happens to be an employee of Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), one of the three best gunslingers alive, on his way to take up the job Thornton turned down, a task made a helluva lot easier because J.P is now the town drunk, having hit the bottle when spurned by a woman, not Maudie I hasten to add.

Thornton heads for El Dorado with Mississippi tagging along, armed with of a sawn-off shotgun. First task is to sober up the sheriff – by fistfight and awful concoction – and stop him becoming a worse figure of fun. On the evidence here Deputy Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) was probably one of the three best riflemen – not to mention archers – alive. He also totes a bugle.

The sober J.P. strolls into the saloon and arrests Bart Jason and sticks him in jail, and to avoid being in a complete siege situation, the quartet, sometimes as a group, sometimes a pair, sometimes alone, venture out, as I mentioned, to pick off the enemy. This allows Mississippi a meet-cute with Joey who’s planning a short-cut to justice by shooting Jason. Maudie re-enters the frame.

The bullet in the back sporadically paralyzes Thornton and J.P. is wounded in the leg so eventually the pair are hobbling around on crutches. Maudie also turns out to be a liability, taken hostage, ensuring Thornton goes to the rescue. But the bullet in the back plays up at exactly the wrong time and Thornton’s also captured, trussed up like a hog (what, John Wayne?) then traded in for the prisoner.

Having by now reduced the odds and not wanting to be caught in a siege, the quartet take the battle to the enemy, ambushing them front and back in the saloon, Thornton ridding Nelse of the notion that he and Thornton will enjoy a winner-takes-all shootout by killing him with a rifle while lying on the ground.

While it could be trimmed – television screenings generally eliminate the racist Chinese impersonation – the action when it comes is blistering. There’s a terrific scene in a tower when Bull targets the bells to disorientate the enemy with their horrendous ear-jarring clanging. And the final shoot-out is exceptionally well done.

In ways not usually gone into, the quartet are experts in their fields. Thornton backs up his horse to get out of a difficult situation, J.P. detects a man hidden behind a piano in the saloon, Mississippi stalks a potential lone assassin, Bull uses bow-and-arrow when silence is required.

Theoretically, Robert Mitchum (Five Card Stud, 1968) steals the show as the drunken sheriff, but that’s only if you are taken in by the surface. The sight of John Wayne with his useless twisted right hand harks back to the arm in The Searchers (1956) and his one-armed rifle action predates True Grit (1969). James Caan (The Rain People, 1969) tries to steal scenes but what chance does he have with these two stars at the top of their game and past master at the scene-stealing malarkey Arthur Hunnicutt (The Cardinal, 1963). Charlene Holt (Red Line 7000, 1965) and Michele Carey (The Sweet Ride, 1968) come out honors even as do Edward Asner (The Venetian Affair, 1966) and Christopher George (The Thousand Plane Raid, 1969).

I don’t put this in the same bracket as Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo, but it’s certainly one of the best westerns of the decade. Written by Leigh Brackett (Hatari!, 1962) from a novel by Harry Brown.

Not one to miss.